Jeff Bezos Is Funding A 10,000 Year Clock In A Cave In Texas

The Amazon founder is helping to build a 10,000 year clock on a
piece of land he owns in West Texas.

The click ticks once every year, and there's a century hand that
moves once every 100 years, as well as a cuckoo that comes out
every millennium. The idea is to get people to think about the
distant future and how our actions today will impact future
generations.

The clock was conceived by inventor Danny Hillis in 1995, and a
non-profit group called the Long Now Foundation has been
promoting the idea since the late 1990s.

Bezos explains in a recent post to the 10,000 Year Clock
site that the initial planning is done and the actual
machinery is now being built.

The team has carved out a bunch of chambers for the clock in the
side of a mountain. The first chamber contains an animation
featuring planets, the moon, and all the spacecraft launched by
mankind in the 20th century. It will run once a year on a
predetermined date.

There are also chambers for the hundred, thousand, and
ten-thousand year marks, but the group is leaving the design of
those animations to future generations.

Visiting the clock is a real commitment: it's several hours away
from the nearest airport and the trail up to it rises 2,000 feet.